Fire
by Golden Blackbird
Summary: Epilogue Non-Compliant, Two Part. Playing with fire, you always get burned.
1. Draco

**FIRE**

* * *

I love him.

If I told you I didn't know when or why this had happened, I'd be lying. I know when, I know why. It happened when I was eleven, and again when I was seventeen, and more recently at the age of twenty-three. I think I was just too stupid to realise it then. There's been so much time stolen from me, I wonder how long I could have kept on. Oblivious.

Maybe forever.

Which makes me incredibly lucky to have found out now, as I'm carrying him out of yet another collapsed building, his face smudged with soot, his suit singed and the visor on his helmet cracked. Him and his fucking hero complex, sending my heart into wild, choking spasms that threaten to put me on the ground right alongside him. He is way too heavy for such a short bloke, and his helmet falls off, thumping heavily on the ground.

Someone notices.

"Shit, Potter's down!" Then the scuttling begins, and the swearing, as the other men on the crew start up, echoing my sentiments about his damnable hero complex. Even half unconscious he's got the kitten clasped firmly to his chest.

"Someone take this fucking rat!" I yell, and the cat vanishes, thrust into the arms of a little girl who thinks she's now killed the man who saved her pet. I don't have time for her tears; I'm trying not to choke on my own. Finally, finally, Potter's on a stretcher, which somehow just makes the situation look worse. Oxygen and EMTs taking his pulse and checking his eyes and good Lord, he's just not breathing right; short, shallow, sharp breaths that rattle.

"Fuck, Harry, you can't die on me now," I say, squeezing between two of the EMTs despite their protests and taking his hand. Infuriatingly, he smiles up at me.

And I realise I love him.

* * *

It was after the war, after Voldemort had been killed, that we first got along. We were both in Saint Mungo's, in the same transfigured wing for war injuries, and I was being my normal, charming self, trying to convince the nurse that I could indeed walk myself up and down the corridor alone. The silly bint twittered like a caged bird, fluttering as I pulled my arm out of hers and hobbled down the hallway as fast as I could. A feat, since my legs had recently been de-boned the good old-fashioned way.

I rounded a corner and two things happened: my left foot slid out from under me, not quite getting the memo that I was turning, and I fell. The nurse shrieked, but I never hit the ground, unless the ground was suddenly warm and soft. Confused, I shook my head, looking up at whoever had caught me, rather as surprised as he looked when I recognised him.

"Potter," I said cautiously, my arms trapped against his chest. He blinked down at me, his forehead creasing, and for a moment I was worried he might just drop me in a heap on the hospital floor. Instead, his arm tightened as he tried to help right me to my shaky feet. The nurse skidded around the corner, looking in wild disarray, and Harry looked over my shoulder at her.

"We're fine. Right, Draco?"

I was too shocked to do anything but nod. The nurse frowned.

"He needs to be in his room," she said.

"Looks like he needs to be learning to walk again," Harry sounded amused, but my stomach flipped uneasily: there was no amusement in those eyes. There was barely any life. The nurse seemed unsure, like she wanted to argue for her patient's sake, but was unwilling to with the famous Harry Potter.

"As long as-"

"I'll make sure he doesn't kill himself," Harry said. The nurse barely nodded, but Harry took hold of my arm and gently led me down the hallway away from her. We had walked like that, Harry not quite supporting me even though I knew I'd fall over if he wasn't there, out into the courtyard, where Harry sat on a stone bench and I sort of folded onto it. We sat that way, observing the trees and the other patients, some of which looked truly gruesome despite their healing.

"Thank you," I said after a while. Harry nodded, his eyes falling half-closed as he stared up into the sky. Not for the first time did I find myself watching him; but it was the first time I became aware of how handsome he was. Even with a plethora of tiny scars punched into his cheek from splinters of wand shrapnel, his eyes unfocussed because- for one reason or another- he had left his glasses off. Perfect. Like some Greek god.

He turned his head slightly to look at me from the corner of his eye, and I quickly looked away, feeling ridiculous.

"Did your tongue get pulled out along with your bones?" he asked.

"No," I managed to say. "Just thinking."

Harry made a thoughtful sound. "I just wondered where the cutting comments would come in."

"They won't," I sighed. "I'm tired of fighting."

"I hear that," Harry said softly. "But there's nothing left for me now."

"You're alive," I said.

"Am I really?" Harry asked, looking down at his arms as if wondering if they were there. The right was streaked with angry strips of red where shards of his wand had burrowed into his arm. He seemed to notice where my gaze had fallen, because he dragged his finger along some of the longer strips. "They couldn't get it all out, you know. I've got little bits of Fawkes and holly in my arm."

"Creepy," I said before I could stop myself, and Harry smirked. The expression never touched his eyes; it made my heart ache.

"Just a little," he said with a nod.

"Why aren't you with Ron and Hermione?" I asked, their names feeling strange on my tongue. Harry seemed to think so, and I got to see the first emotion in his eye: a cynical spark. It made my skin crawl.

"Weasley's angry about something, probably his brother being dead and all. Granger… it's like all she saw was a killer," he shook his head, his eyes closing, looking utterly despondent sitting in that patch of sunlight, the backs of his arms against his knees and his head bowed. "I am a killer."

"You killed a madman who destroyed half of our world," I said.

"I killed," was the simple reply. I realised then that I wouldn't be able to convince him otherwise. The silence that we sat in after that was hardly awkward. It was comforting after the screams and howls and general chaos of the last battle. Somehow, over the next few days I spent in hospital, the uneasy truce we had come to held.

The day I was discharged from Saint Mungo's, I shouldered my bag and walked to Harry's room, but he was already gone. It hurt to say the least, although I didn't understand why. I turn to leave, my head hanging, and walked into Harry again, his arms raised defensively as I ran into him. For a moment he looked surprised, and then he grinned one of those cold, soulless grins that made a chill crawl up my back.

"I thought you'd left," I said.

"I almost did," Harry replied, taking a step back from me. "Then I remembered something." He motioned for me to move and I stepped aside, allowing him back into his room. He stooped and picked a small, golden ball off of his nightstand, staring at it for a moment. He looked back at me before shoving it into his bag. I guess it was too much to hope he had come back for me.

"That wasn't it," he said quietly. "I remembered I did have a friend." That was unnerving, like he had crawled into my ear and taken up residence in my brain.

"Friend?"

"What else would you call us?" he seemed genuinely puzzled. "The only person who gave two shits for _me_ instead of my face or my fame, then." I nodded; that sounded about right. We left the hospital together; taking a room at the Leaky Cauldron since neither of us had anywhere to go. The room was dark and dreary, the beds thin and creaky, yet I was glad to see it. It didn't smell like hospital; there wasn't a familiar face around every corner. There was just Harry, who sank onto one of the knobbly mattresses and sighed as it did.

Then he looked up at me, his eyes sad and puppy-like, and I for the first time since Hogwarts I felt like I was actually seeing Harry. His smile slid off of his face slowly, a shadow crossing over his eyes, and that feeling was gone. In all the months we spent holed up in that room, hiding from the world, no one bothered to try and find him. The Daily Prophet never failed to deliver a daily dose of Potter worship, but it clearly wasn't the care Harry craved.

So, when he decided he had to get away from all the things he had fought to keep and lost in the end anyway, who was I to question him? I helped him pack up his meagre possessions and watched as he slammed the boot of the taxi shut, apprehension trying to strangle me in its deathly embrace. Harry looked at me like he wished very much to say something to make the hurt I was feeling better, but he couldn't. He just looked lost. I didn't care anymore what people thought; I reached out and pulled him into a hug, wondering why he was shaking, so faintly. He looked up at me.

"No one ever cared about me," he said softly. "Don't start now."

"Wouldn't dream of it," I said, trying to inflect some lightness into my voice. Harry knew that. He also knew I was failing miserably. He got into his taxi and left me standing there in front of the Cauldron, alone. More alone than I had ever been. Perhaps it was the gut-wrenching fear of being alone again that drove me to do it, but I found myself throwing my things haphazardly into my bag and apparating- without a care for who might see- to the airport.

Harry was looking out at the airfield, a stark silhouette against the pristine glass, affording himself a pocket of space in the crowd because of how he was. I knew he could see me in the reflection, so I didn't say anything, just took up a space behind him and watched the planes taking off. There was one thing I found out when we lifted away from the ground: I hated aeroplanes. If I ever boarded one again, it would be too soon. Harry had no such reservations; he stared out the window as if contemplating jumping out of it.

Procuring the necessary papers was easy with magic, but the burden fell on me; Harry had never replaced his wand. Getting us a flat proved more difficult, but it was done, and all under the nose of the government of the United States, under the American Magic Panel. Harry was silent the whole time, taking in the world through those empty eyes. Everything we chose was my idea. The only thing Harry decided was to join the New York City fire department. And where Harry went, I followed.

The day we completed training was the second time I saw the real Harry. We were celebrating with some of the blokes in our class in the rip-roaring drunken fashion that American men seem to enjoy so much, and Harry looked over at me from his place in the corner of the booth, his face flushed and his eyes positively glowing behind his glasses. He lifted his bottle towards me across the table and they clinked together, and Harry laughed.

I remembered why it was I had wanted this man to be my friend when we were children.

I was glad I'd finally managed to achieve it by being me, rather than a Malfoy.

The next day, Harry surprised me further by bringing a kitten home. A white kitten, with shockingly blue eyes. Harry shrugged childishly when he handed it to me, and I balanced the little thing like it was an alien being.

"He reminded me of you," Harry said. "I like cats." Well, I couldn't very well tell him to get rid of it, no matter how much I didn't like cats. Jasper became a sort of shadow that followed us around when we were home and lounged in the shade of my ficus when we weren't. He quickly grew into a sleek and handsome cat with a question mark tail. Jasper was one of two animals in our lives, because our house had a cat as well, a black and white spotted monster named Moo. We always joked that Moo fancied himself a Dalmatian, the way he had strode into the station one day, plopped himself on top of McCullen's gear, and gone to sleep like he belonged there.

The house was family. Chief was a rotund little man who had spent the better part of forty years working there. He'd practically raised his kids in the house, which made him incredibly protective of the crew. He seemed to think that we were just as in need of raising as his children had been. When the bells went off and we all thumped down into our gear and jumped on those screaming engines, he was all business. Harry wasn't.

Harry tended to do crazy things. Like jump from one building to another, climb up walls into windows, and throw himself under burning beams. Ninety per cent of the time I had to chase him into a building with his helmet, which usually fell off when he bolted in after a screaming child or, God forbid, an animal that had been left behind. Harry was fearless and reckless, he had absolutely no regard for his safety, and I knew even then that I did care about what happened to him. Everyone on the crew did.

Saving lives, Harry came out of himself. When I looked him in the eye I no longer wanted to look away, when he grinned, the expression took his entire face: eyes and lips and dimples in his cheeks that I had never noticed before. He gesticulated wildly with his hands to make a point, jumped around like there were springs on the bottom of his boots. He was the most childish and free member on the team, which sort of suited his boyishly good looks, teenage-husky voice and height.

Even then, I could admit that I was attracted to him. He was, after all, attractive. He was also the only thing I had left, and something I wasn't about to screw up. So I grinned and bore it when he stabbed me with his fork to get my attention, or strolled out of the shower with his hair sticking up and wearing only a towel, or leaned up against me after he had exhausted himself with another insane manoeuvre.

Then it happened. We weren't actually on duty then: Harry was reading a book on the balcony with Jasper on his lap, absently scritching the cat's ears, and I was trying to figure out the new sound system we had just bought. I swear, the moment I threw the information manual to the ground, everything shook. I looked up at Harry and he was staring with this horrified look on his face, and when I joined him to see what he was looking at, I knew why he looked so awful.

"We've gotta go," he said. All I could do was nod.

Most of our crew showed up that day. They tried to joke, tried to be light-hearted when the two Englishmen showed up, pointedly avoiding making any jokes when Ami came in, his jaw clenched and looking mighty pissed off. It was one thing to joke about us, but with Ami it would have been simply tasteless: he was Arabic, after all. Tasteless.

We were lucky. Our crew got out of it unscathed, but over three hundred other good men perished that day. No more fathers, brothers, nephews or sons. We didn't get home until the next morning, and by then, Harry's unflagging enthusiasm had flagged. He looked drawn and tired in a way I hadn't seen since we had left England. For the first time in the five years we had been here, Harry joined me on the balcony. With a shaky hand he stole one of my cigarettes and took a long, unpractised drag.

"Lucky you run into fires without your mask so often," I joked. Harry laughed, a nervous chuckle, exhaling smoke into the sharp September air.

"Lucky," Harry said dramatically, taking another drag. "Damn humans."

"Humans are disgusting," I agreed.

He hadn't pulled any stunts that day. He didn't for several long weeks.

What he did do, which surprised me greatly, happened that night. Every time I closed my eyes for longer than five minutes I ended up smelling smoke and hearing the dull, pervading thud of people running and screaming and crying, all rolled into one awful sound. I rolled over and stared out the window, wondering if I'd ever sleep again. I had to. I had work to do tomorrow. My door creaked open and I heard Jasper meow plaintively.

"Come on up, furball," I sighed, and felt Jaspers tiny feet pit-pattering to the end of the bed, where he curled up. What I hadn't expected was for something a lot larger than Jasper to lift up the sheets and curl up beside me.

"Couldn't sleep," Harry whispered. I looked back over my shoulder at him, lying nearly at the edge of the bed, and reached back to grab his hand. Harry hesitated, but came closer, and closer still, until he was pressing up against me, using me as a teddy bear. It seemed to relax him, his proximity to me, and it didn't take long for whatever had kept him awake to be forgotten and he was breathing deeply and slowly against the back of my neck. How casual he could be, not knowing how he could affect me.

Sleep was hard to come by, but at least it wasn't because of stress.

The first time someone caught on, I nearly had a heart attack.

Jeremy- Gardener, had been with the crew for seven years- was cradling Moo in his arm as I made a sandwich. Harry had bolted into the kitchen area in his classically Harry way, almost running into the table and knocking over a chair as he did so. He ran straight into me, pushing me up against the counter, and dug his hands into my back pockets, coming out with my wallet, which he waved in the air and ran away with. I just sort of stared after him, dumbstruck, a knife slathered in mayonnaise in one hand, and then I looked at Jeremy.

His eyes were calculating and cool, looking me up and down. I would have sworn he could see right through me, and it terrified me. He nodded, very slightly, barely inclining his head, and went back to rubbing Moo's stomach. I stared at him for a moment.

"You gonna get it?" he asked.

"Uh…" He looked up at me again. "Yes, of course." I had a horrible feeling that we weren't taking about my wallet, but Jeremy didn't say anything else. I turned back to my sandwich, my head spinning, and heard Harry come back into the kitchen, crowing. He shoved my wallet back into my pocket.

"Thanks, needed the credit card," he said, standing on tiptoes and looking over my shoulder. He tried to steal my sandwich and I pretended to stab him with my knife, but he somehow managed to snatch half of it anyway. He fell heavily into the seat across from Jeremy, who seemed to be laughing at some unheard joke, and Harry stuffed most of the sandwich into his mouth.

"Do you ever need to breathe, Potter?" Jeremy asked. Harry shook his head.

"Good training," he mumbled through his mouthful. I felt like melting into the floor right then, but luckily the alarm went off, saving me from complete embarrassment.

After that, it was like everyone except Harry caught on. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why he didn't. Harry might have been jumpy and childish, but he was surprisingly contact-shy. Just about the only people he willingly touched were those that he was rescuing, and me. Not only did he accept me touching him, he actively touched back, prodding and pulling and pushing me. The crew seemed to adopt a new policy: we didn't say it, so it's not happening.

We saved lives. It was what we did. Day after day we ran willingly into burning buildings and gas leaks and breakdowns and saved lives. It made Harry happy, it made me happy. It was probably the most ridiculous thing I'd ever thought of, but it did. Somehow, the heat and the smoke caused an adrenaline high that couldn't be beat, which made me feel more alive than I ever had before. It had that affect on Harry too; I could tell. Some might have said I loved to play with the fire; everyone knew that Harry loved it.

He was always the Golden Child, after all.

Harry's twenty-second birthday rolled around, and by some twist of fate he wasn't working that evening. Neither of us were. Which, of course, led me to bringing him out. Harry protested in his half-hearted, not-meaning-it way, but nevertheless allowed me to drag him to a club, something he had never quite got used to. I never realised how much of a problem it could be for him, until I realised that a prerequisite for standing near a club was the need to be a tactile person, which Harry emphatically was not.

What Harry was was adorable, which immediately drew a slew of half-dressed women towards him. I stepped back, wondering what to do, feeling a slightly ill twist in my stomach. I'd brought him out to have fun, and while this wasn't my idea of fun, maybe it was his. I stood there awkwardly, balancing Harry's beer and my vodka, watching as his eyelashes fluttered against his cheek as he looked down at one of the women. She leaned on him and he leaned away.

Then he looked at me, his green eyes wide and begging, and I waded into that crowd, shoved the drinks into the woman's hands, and hauled Harry right back out of there. He leaned heavily against me, like I was a lifeline, giggling madly.

"God they _reeked_," he said.

"Alcohol," I said, and tugged him. Harry squeezed out of my grasp and thumbed over his shoulder.

"Meet you at home," he said, and I nodded. Vodka and a six pack, it was that simple to please the both of us. Bag hanging from my elbow, I took the lift to our floor and strolled down the hallway. Jiggling the key into the lock, I pushed the door open with my foot and shut again with the other, kicking my trainers off into the closet door.

Harry was on the balcony. I grabbed a glass, dropped some ice into it, and headed out after him, dropping the bag before I sank into my seat. I cracked open the vodka and slopped some into the glass; Harry was smoking again, and it took one whiff to know it wasn't one of my cigarettes.

"Oh dear Lord, it's Harry Pothead," I smirked, sipping my vodka. It burned. God knew when I started loving things that hurt.

"That got old a while ago," Harry said, but sounded amused. He exhaled, painting the black sky with acrid, sickly-sweet smoke before offering it to me.

"When was the last time I accepted that?"

Harry shrugged. "Three years ago, it was a Sunday. Halloween."

"Nice memory, stoner," I joked.

"Am I really?" he asked distractedly, taking another haul and holding it in. His head tilted back, exposing that delicious neck for a moment before he pressing his hands, heel to heel, against it. I threw back more of my vodka than I probably should have and bared my teeth against the sting.

"Nah. Recreational smoker," I supplied. Harry nodded.

"Sounds good," he croaked, and exhaled. I didn't like him high, but I'd never tell him, because it was approximately three times a year he actually did it: his birthday, the anniversary of his parents' death, and the anniversary of the end of the war. Sometimes he strayed from the path, but not usually. When he did, I'd lose the hyper, exuberant, passionate Harry, and end up with some mellow semblance of him. Mellow didn't do Harry well.

He snuffed out his first spliff and reached for a beer, and thus began the normal birthday routine, and I wondered why I'd tried to break this excellent yearly thing.

"God, Drake, you're moppin' up the floor with me," Harry said after his second beer, clinking the bottle against the flat ring on his left hand before dropping the bottle back into the box. He'd never told me where he got it; I never asked. I supposed I was mopping the floor with him; a good deal of my vodka was gone, and the burn in my throat was becoming a pleasantly numb warmth.

"I always tell you I'll nail you to the wall if you call me Drake," I told him, as he leaned forward to roll himself another. Sometimes, it was hard to watch him. Jasper wandered out onto the balcony, winding between my ankles. The cat stood up with his paws on my knee and meowed, bobbing his head as if to calculate if he could fit in my lap. Which he could. I used his head as a coaster and he purred.

"Drake, Drake, Drakey-Poo," Harry chortled. I had always been serious about him calling me Drake; not because I didn't like it, but because it sounded like one of those pet names he'd give me if he was mine. Because I was afraid I would nail him to the wall, actually. The spark of the lighter was a shock, painting Harry in a sharp relief of almost white skin and orange light. He was gorgeous.

The night ended with my vodka and his last joint, snuffed out in a puddle of beer he'd spilled earlier. I stumbled into my room and fell into bed, curling up in the comforting warmth.

The morning began with an elephant in my head, a cat against my chest, and Harry at my back. He snored, loudly, rubbing his forehead against the back of my head. He was almost possessive in his clinging, and clearly he had never actually got further than unbuttoning his shirt before he had staggered into my room, but I still felt like I had done something unspeakably evil to him. Jasper tried to stick his paw up my nose.

"Oh shit," Harry whispered against my neck. I felt him try to peel himself surreptitiously away from me.

"Already up," I mumbled, and he froze.

"Er," he said eloquently. I chuckled as I sat up, trying not to feel the intense pressure on my brain. When I turned around Harry was standing up, looking adorably awkward with one hand in his hair and the other in his pocket. I could envy him and his headache-avoiding brain. Maybe he had the right idea with smoking while he drank.

"You are such a dork," I said instead.

"I'll make breakfast," Harry offered, and left the room. Make breakfast he did, along with a pot of coffee that could have drowned me and a handful of aspirin. God, I loved aspirin. I threw back those little pills with a pile of bacon, three pieces of toast and two cups of coffee.

That day, the crew managed to procure a German chocolate cake and, for the first birthday in the three years we had been there, there wasn't a fire in the middle of the ball busting. Harry ended up wearing some of his cake on his nose, and I had the ridiculous urge to lick it off. Which would, suffice to say, be a very bad idea, with all the crew there, laughing at him like he was a dancing monkey. Harry laughed too, swiping the icing off of his nose and trying to decorate Moo with it. I wanted him to decorate me with it: a very bad idea.

The alarms rang, startling me from my reverie, and everyone was up and moving, business as usual, except for Harry. He dragged me up into the engine, playing a game of swears with the other blokes in our company until we got there. Apartment ablaze, three people trapped on the top floor, routine. Until we were told the stairwell had collapsed, and everyone turned- at least mentally- towards Harry. He seemed to assess the building for a second.

"Yeah, all right," he said, and started clambering up the wall.

"Harness, Potter!" Chief shouted, but Harry didn't notice.

"Dray, Jay, get in there!" I shook my head, bolting into the building after Jeremy. We swept quickly, broke out the windows, and got the hell out of there before anything came down on us. I ran into the road to find Chief still staring up the ladder, waiting for Harry to climb down.

"Draco, your idiot isn't out yet!" Chief bellowed, like a wounded bull.

"Oi!" a voice shouted, and I looked back to see Harry coming out from behind the building, a kid tucked under each arm and their mother hanging off of his shoulder, wild-eyed.

"You little shit!" Chief yelled at him. Harry preened.

"You are a little shit," I told him later, and he preened more.

"Blow me," he says quite happily, flipping our hamburgers over. I think I discovered a shade of red as of yet unknown to man.

"Only after you fuck yourself," I returned, smacking him with one of the pans he'd taken out while getting the one he was using. That was our relationship in a nutshell. No more painful jibes, swearing that could curl hair, or hateful remarks. I didn't remember a single actually hateful thing being said in the years since England. It was a nice change from what I had spent the majority of my life with. We ate, and Jasper begged, and we watched television all night.

I watched Harry.

Harry's eyes, green like envy, framed by thick lashes. His face, still almost childish in its construction, and his hair like a black wildfire. With Jasper on his lap, sprawled across the sofa, he looked like he had never grown up. He was absently stroking Jasper's back, and he was arching into the touch like he needed it to live, and I wished that he was stroking me. Was it too much to hope that he'd meant it when he said Jasper reminded him of me?

Jasper wasn't alone for long. It was in another fire that we'd got the dog, a scrappy little black mutt. The old woman who owned it asphyxiated before we even got there, leaving this dirty little dog who would go to the SPCA if someone at the house didn't take it. So I did. I couldn't help it, and when Harry stared at it like it was an alien, I told him, "He reminded me of you."

"I am not that filthy," Harry had replied, but smiled when the dog licked at him. We named him Shorty, and he became Jasper's shadow, much to the cat's displeasure. It amused me more than it should have, that our pets were practically stuck together at the hip and we were in basically the same predicament. Harry and I hadn't actually been apart since moving here, not for longer than we needed to be. It was an open joke in the house that we were so close, like brothers, but almost completely opposite in every way. Light and dark; tall and short; childish and calm.

Then it happened. There was a gas leak at a rundown old triplex and we were called out, just the company, with McCullen and Jeremy and Ami. We cleared out the building as we tried to find the leak, and that was when I learned why Chief always insisted we stick together, not just in pairs. Some arsehole came out of nowhere with a chunk of splintered wood and took my legs clean out from under me. Meeting the floor was not on my agenda that day, but it was where I ended up.

"Harry!" I called, and he turned around to get a face full of two-by-four. It was the single most terrifying instance of my life, watching Harry crumple to the floor. Next thing I knew the idiot was chuckling, and he dropped a match on the floor, sending the building up in flames. No gas leak, just a hell of a lot of good old gasoline, drenching this bloke's flat. Then Ami was tackling fire-starter to the ground, wrenching his arms up behind his back and dragging him forcibly out of the room, and Jeremy had run into the flames to pull Harry up across his shoulders, pausing only long enough to help me to my feet.

We called the MICU and another company in to put out the fire. That was the first time I watched Harry being patched up by our crew.

I told myself it would be the last.

I was told later, as I sat by Harry's bedside, that the bloke had lost two brothers to the FDNY in 2001. His brother's wife had committed suicide and took both the kids with her; his other brother's lover had taken his own life via a heroin overdose. I didn't care. Harry was lying in the hospital bed with his face patched up and burns in his lower back and legs, while that guy would walk free on bail. It made me sick to my stomach.

"Hey man, love ya," Harry croaked when he saw the look on my face, trying to smile. So very Harry. Now I was heartsick too.

"I'll be back, okay?" I said tightly. "Gotta walk Shorty." Harry had nodded, closing his eyes, and I had left the hospital in a smouldering rage. Ami was coming in as I went out, and he stopped me for a moment.

"Don't get caught," he told me. He didn't try to stop me. Everyone in the house loved Harry, after all; everyone in the company treated him like the Wonderboy he was. Harry was our brother; the moron who tried to set all of us on fire wasn't. I hung around the precinct I knew he'd been taken to, waiting around until it was dark before he stepped out of it, laughing. He was a cop. A fucking _cop_ trying to set a firefighter on fire because his brothers had been unlucky enough to be killed doing their job. We honoured them; I was about to gut him.

I followed him down four streets before he noticed something was up and bolted down an alley. It was so easy to catch him. One _immobilus _and he was caught in a timeswing, frozen in space. I wanted to make him scream and cry and beg for forgiveness. Feel what Harry had felt, what his brothers had felt. He wasn't doing them proud, he was shitting on everything they had believed in. I ended the paralysing spell and immediately began another, one I never thought I'd use again.

"What the fuck are you?" he squeaked, and I narrowed my eyes.

"You hurt him," I said levelly. "I think it's only reasonable I return the favour." His eyes widened. "_Crucio._"

He screamed. Oh God, did he scream. I had to end the spell and silence him before I could go on, but I was glad I'd got those first hideous wails out of him. I watched with cold impassivity as he seized on the ground for several long moments, before he flipped himself over and tried to crawl away, jerking all the while. His palms drew long, bloody streaks on the cement and his fingernails started to crackle, I could hear his jeans ripping as he writhed along the ground.

Then he stopped.

And I was never happier.

I returned to the hospital, grinning. Ami was sitting by Harry's bedside, joking with him about some sport or another, when I pulled up a seat. I guess the bloke always knew I was responsible when they found the body, but there was no way to link it to a physical manslaughter, let alone me. It didn't change how he looked at me though. It didn't change how Harry looked at me. That was the longest time we were apart in the years we were there.

Harry was mine. I'd be damned if anyone thought they could hurt him like that.

When we got home, Shorty and Jasper were happy to see us, and we were happy to see them. Harry curled up on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn in the crook of one arm, Shorty on his lap and Jasper around his neck. He beckoned me to join him, neatly stuffing me into the crook of the other arm and subjecting me to a truly horrible war movie. I hated war movies, but I watched them for Harry. Somehow, he thought they were soothing.

Harry was never the stay-at-home type, so before I knew it he was begging me to heal up his injuries and we were back at the house. We joked that Harry was a fast healer, something about his magical genes, and the blokes laughed. They patted Harry on the back and poked his still-tender cheek, and everyone had to see his new scars, to compare them of course. Not to say Harry dropped his trousers right there or anything, but he did pull his shirt up.

Grinning wickedly at me all the while.

I just about died right then, honestly.

Don't ask don't tell. The house didn't care.

Well before he should have been contemplating such things, Harry insisted we get tattooed. Something about a right of passage or whatnot, some bollocks that I didn't really listen to. I was still floored on the fact that he wanted me to let someone draw pictures on my body with a needle, of all things. I don't know how Harry convinced me to do such crazy things, but I ended up enjoying it. Again, I wondered when I had started liking things that hurt.

Vodka. Tattoos. Fire. Harry.

Harry got a string of Celtic knots up his spine, from his tailbone to his hair. I'd never tell him, but it was quite possibly the sexiest thing he could have got. The sounds he made while he was getting it were rather awful too, bringing to mind things that I shouldn't have been thinking about: whines and groans and panting. Good God, he was practically having sex with the needle. I decided, in the end, to go with something safe: a snake that curled in on itself, eating its own tail.

"Ouroboros," Harry crowed, stabbing it with his finger. I could have snapped it off. I looked it up later. A snake that lives forever by eating itself, a symbol of eternity repeating. It sounded good to me.

Before I knew it, it was Halloween again. We wasted three minor fires before the day was out, swapping with the night crew. We got to see Ami's kids- twin girls as twin faeries- and McCullen's youngest grandson- dressed as Spiderman- before we headed for home. Smirnoff and a Bud six-pack later, we were on the balcony and I lit a cigarette, taking a long haul. Shorty seemed offended and curled up on the sofa, far away from us.

For the first time in four years, I accepted Harry's offer. I hated him high; but mellow did me well. I needed to be mellow just to beat this damnable monster growing in my stomach, telling me to take a chance with him. I wasn't jeopardising what we had because my trousers were uncomfortable. Thankfully, that night Harry was able to stay in his own bed. That was probably the best idea, because by the time I got to bed I really had to pull one off.

Harry, with his delicious neck arching as he leaned back. Harry, his eyes fluttering closed as he let smoke out of his mouth like a sleeping dragon. Harry's hand on mine as we passed the joint back and forth. Harry's husky-hoarse laugh. Harry's Golden Boy skin, Harry's innocence, Harry's body. Harry, Harry, _Harry_.

God damnit all to Hell.

I wondered why I had all the luck and none of it at the same time. I was with, quite possibly, the most perfect man to ever grace the lowly Earth with his presence; I had a job that I would die for; I had a life that most people would envy. But that man was as straight as straight blokes got; that job would likely kill me someday; the life was empty without the love I craved. I loved Harry, but it wasn't what he needed, what he craved. It was like God wanted to mock me.

The bastard.

Damn him to Hell, too.

"Oi," Harry said one day, slamming his hand of cards on the table. "I'm out."

"You suck, Potty," Jeremy said cheerfully.

"Fucking prick," Billy growled, dropping his hand as well. Jeremy had a terrible poker face; if he was so glad, he was going to win. I folded, and then Lee did. Moo jumped onto the table and situated himself on the pile of cards. He glared at us like we shouldn't dare to have fun in his presence if he wasn't the reason we were having fun. Then, the alarms went.

"_Shit_!" Jeremy yelled, throwing his cards down. A losing hand.

We were into our gear and onto the engines in a flash, like the good little boys we all were. Harry was bouncing on the balls of his feet, tapping a rhythm on his helmet, bobbing his head to an unheard beat. It was when his whole body got into the bobbing that he started singing, some ridiculous song that I had always hated. Jeremy joined in, and even Ami from the driver's seat, and McCullen rolled his eyes. Lieutenant was more business than Chief was.

This time it was a hotel, but it didn't look so bad. We went in together, splitting into threes to check the rooms for anyone left behind, the smoke threatening to choke us up. Harry, of course, forsook his mask, crouching under the bulk of the smoke as he forced doors. He always thought that people were less likely to respond to a saviour who looked like a tubular alien bug. We were at the last door on the third level when we found a little girl. Jeremy scooped her up and she shrieked.

"My kitty! My kitty! Where's Mister Whiskers?"

Harry dove back into the room despite the peeling wallpaper. He flipped over a coffee table and shoved a sofa out of the way before finding the damn cat, hiding in a corner like an idiot. Cradling the thing, he turned back to me with a grin on his face. "Looks like no one got-" Stuck. That was the end of the sentence. I knew it was. But it never came out. A beam fell from the ceiling, covered in white-hot flames that licked at the air. It took Harry across the shoulders and drove him to the floor.

"Fuck!" I shouted, tearing forward before I realised I was moving. I tried to yank Harry out from under the beam, but it didn't give. "Harry's down!" I yelled into my walkie, but all that returned was static. With a frustrated yell I tried to yank Harry out again, bracing a foot against the beam- God it burned- and pulling. The beam shifted, crashing to the floor where Harry had been a moment before. He wasn't moving, or breathing, just clutching the damn kitten.

"Shit shit _shit_," I breathed, sliding one hand under his knees and the other around his shoulders, and staggered to my feet. The whole room was on fire now. The whole building was. I got the fuck out of there.

* * *

Harry hasn't moved properly for three days. He's woken up and babbled several times, but he's barely been lucid. I've kept a silent vigil over his bedside, clasping his free hand loosely in mine. I'm almost as much a wreck as he looks: wondering when he'll wake up, if he's all right. I haven't had a cigarette in those three days and it's wearing on me.

On the end table was Harry's ring, a wide, plain silver band that he's never without. On a whim I reach out for it, rolling it along my palm. I had no idea why he wore it or where he had got it. It lays flat against my palm and the light catches an inscription on the inside, something I've never seen before. _Remember the Drake. HPDM. _I look up at Harry.

He's looking back at me. Not unfocussed like he has been lately, but clearly and sharply, like he's reading me. Those startling emerald eyes look a little surprised, a little frightened, but altogether happy. A slow smile splits Harry's face, looking almost sinister, a word I'd never apply to him in a million years. It highlights the mottled bruising along the side of his face, pulls the split lip further apart. I don't think, I just act, sliding my hand back into his, and he squeezes.

He doesn't ask why his other arm is in a sling across his shoulder, or how long he's been out for, he just takes it in stride. He's in the hospital and that's good enough for him.

"Haven't moved, eh?" he says lightly, his husky voice rasping. "Your arse is gonna atrophy and then you won't be able to use it." I have to smile at that, at how close he's come to the truth without coming to it. I haven't moved, and my arse is numb, but I just don't care. It's worth it to be near him.

"Harry," I say, and he cuts me off with his eyes.

"When we get home," he tells me.

When we get home, it's like we never left. Jasper becomes Harry's necklace; Shorty becomes his lap-warmer. We sit on the balcony to celebrate, complete with booze and drugs. I won't complain tonight; we both need it. He's got his ring back on and is slowly turning it around his finger as we sit in an amiable silence and watch the traffic below. He's still in a sling, but the bruising on his face has gone down, turning from an angry purple to a sickly yellow, and his lip is almost healed. For once, he doesn't want me to heal him, he wants to take the time off he's got coming to him.

He's stroking Shorty's ears and looking out at the sky, not really watching it, when he says, "You never asked me where I got it."

I shrug. "It didn't seem so important." He turns to look at me, clear, amused cat's eyes, and takes a hit from his joint.

"When I was leaving, I wanted to be able to remember someone who actually cared," he says. It's quiet and contemplative, like he's deep in thought as he looks at me. It's the first time I've seen him look at me so carefully, like he might miss something if he looks away. It's the most intense scrutiny I've ever been under, and I now know how bacteria under microscopes feel. But I can't look away, because if I do, I might lose my one chance. My only chance.

Harry nods slightly, and Shorty groans as Harry scratches inside his ear. "I keep getting almost killed."

"Hardly," I say.

"It just sort of reminded me," he continues, like I haven't said anything. "I've been wasting my time." My heart sinks. Where is this going? What the hell is going on? He seems to pick up on my anxiety because he smiles a soothing smile that doesn't look sinister at all. He stops scratching Shorty's ear, and he's tucking some of my hair behind mine, something he does rather often, but with the way he's staring at me it's like a punch in the gut. When he offers me his spliff, I don't even think.

"I could have been even happier all this time," he says quietly. Like he set a bird free in my ribcage, my heart is fluttering in panic. It's all I can do not to choke and start coughing, which would be an utter embarrassment as a firefighter and a chain smoker.

"You… you're n-n-not," I stutter, and take a breath of fresh air. "You're not kidding with me?" He doesn't even have to answer me. Not for the first time I feel like strangling him. He tilts his head and his hair hangs out of his eyes, and he goes back to scratching at Jasper, just around his neck. The cat purrs like an old car engine, kneading his paws and squinting at me like he's taunting me.

"That's the epiphany you had when you were unconscious for three days?" I ask, and he nods.

"I suppose you had a better one while your arse went numb."

This isn't quite how I want this to go. I clear my throat and Harry just watches me with those eyes, looking faintly amused and more knowing than I've ever seen him. Harry observes people, yes, but he doesn't stare at me in quite that way. It's like he can understand at a glance. I'm afraid of what he's seeing as he watches me, his eyes flicking across my face before settling on my own again with a lazy sort of smile.

"Well?" he prompts.

"I…" I pause, and decide I need another drag before I can speak. Harry's eyes sparkle.

"Love me?" I do choke then, and start a series of long, whooping coughs. When I manage to stop them tears are at my eyes, blurring Harry out of focus, but he's still smiling at me. "I figured it out a while ago," he says. "I was just waiting for you."

"You…" I don't have anything to say. At his insistence I pass his joint back and he snuffs it, before it's anywhere near done, something I've never seen him do. Then he flicks his half-smoked roach off the balcony. He convinces Shorty to vacate his lap and evicts Jasper from the spot around his neck, and then he stands up. He offers me his hand and I take it, utterly confused, and that's when the normal Harry pops up: his eyes shine, that lazy smiles turns shy and cheeky, and he practically bounces on the balls of his feet.

Looking down at him, I can see his eyes through his eyelashes, the shadows in the dimples on his cheek as he grins up at me. He tilts his head back and his hair curls itself against his forehead. He's gentle, which is absolutely ridiculous considering his arm is in a sling and he's still tender from the last time he got caught in a fire. It's also absolutely ridiculous because he's so exuberant. I can feel the barely-restrained tension in his body. He's trying not to scare me, fuck this up. He's trying to do this right.

God I can't _stand_ it.

I flatten one hand against his lower back, feeling the rough skin of the scarring, and he hisses into my mouth. That bare restraint seems to snap as he grabs my arse, pulling me flush against his body. Suddenly I wonder if I've been counting right all these years or if Harry's had some extra hands hidden up his shirt, because they're tangled in my hair and shuffling my shirt up my back and his thumbs are running around the waistband of my jeans. For a minute I wonder how he's doing that, because no matter how many hands he's been hiding, one is out of commission, until I realise he's got himself out of the sling.

I'm against the door now, and Harry whispers hoarsely against my lips, "Open it." Oh Lord, I think I'd do anything he asks me right then. He keeps up his slow walking, feeling just about every inch of me, including the parts I forgot I had. It's a bit jarring when the splint on his last two fingers scrapes against my skin, but I can deal with it. I can deal with it because he's finally touching me and this isn't some dream. My legs hit the bed and I reach down, rucking Harry's shirt up and over his head, along with the sling. Harry's grimaces a bit as his shoulder bends in ways it probably still can't, but he doesn't seem to care.

It's not like I haven't ever seen Harry before. I've seen him coming out of the shower, on the balcony on a hot summer day with his shirt unbuttoned, changing at the house. What I haven't ever been able to do is actually look at him, and by God, he's gorgeous. I remember back all those years when I first thought he was some exotic god and think, yeah, I was on the button there. Work has toned and sculpted him into something anyone would kill to have. And I don't have to.

He pushes and I slide, heedless of where I'm going, landing with a soft thump on the bed, but I don't let go of him. I press my forehead against his chest and just breathe, revelling in the moment, before he takes the opportunity to pull my tee shirt up over my head. He acts like he's never seen me before as he pushes me down and straddles my hips, tracing a finger through little rivets of muscle and scar tissue alike, a faintly impish grin on his face. After all these years we've gathered a collection, he and I.

I run my hand up the dimples on his right arm, up along the faint ticks on his cheek, down and around the raw, new patch on his neck, down his back. He grinds against me and I forget how to breathe, which is lucky because he doesn't seem to be interested in letting me anymore. I'm dizzy when he finally stops kissing me, mouthing along my jaw and neck and breathing should not be so sexy but it is when he does it there, shaky like he's laughing.

He is. Laughing that is, and I suspect it's because I've got my hands in his pockets and I'm rutting against him like a teenage dog. But I don't care. I'm too far gone into Eden to care. Harry is like someone took a sex god and shoved it into the body of a rocker, then told him to fight fires and be merry. It's intoxicating when I breathe in and smell him: soap and hospital and the all-pervading essence of smoke. I don't think I'll ever be able to smoke again after this, not without getting a hard-on.

"Want you," he whispers, and if someone's brain could implode and explode at the same time, I think mine did just then.

"Oh God yes," I breathe. I don't know if Harry's been sneaking off for sex the past six years, but I know the only action I've been getting is with myself. Now that I've actually got the object of my desire in my hands, I feel like putty. Pure, blissful putty. There's the conspiratorial _bzzp _of a zipper, and then I lose Harry. I try to focus on him but it's so hard in the half-light, with more blood in my groin than my brain and my eyes almost crossed from euphoria.

He's sliding out of his jeans, an achingly slow striptease that makes me want to beg him to go faster. Then he starts on mine, dragging them off of my hips without even stopping to unzip, his fingernails catching the sensitive skin there and making me want to scream. He's so good.

He's too good.

He's a fucking god.

"Up," he tells me, and I do it, just because he said so. He presses something into my hand and it takes me a minute to register that it's lube, and my brain shouts and dances in giddy anticipation, throwing a parade in between my ears. I never did get around to losing that pesky virginity, after all.

"Really?" Harry sounds amused, and it takes me a minute to realise I said that out loud. I feel like melting into the floor until he wraps his hand around my dick, slow, tantalising strokes that make my brain buzz. "Let's fix that."

Can't argue with that logic. I don't think I could argue with a turkey at that point. The damn bird would win. I don't precisely fumble my way through the first few exercises, because my fingers are trying really hard to cooperate even though they seem to have lost all circulation. I'm half expecting Harry to just get up and laugh at me before leaving, but he doesn't. He pants and he groans and he whines, and I can't get over the fact that he's making those sounds for me. Because of me.

He pulls me down roughly, kissing me with enough passion to make my toes curl up and my stomach flip-flop, before he says, "Come on, Drake." He braces himself, forearms and knees, and I can't help but moan as I slide in. Of all the fucking things in the world, I am so glad I did this right. So fucking glad. He's got his forehead between his arms and he's still making those delicious sounds, his hair falling in tousled waves to hide his face. For once I'm glad of my height on him, as I lean over, covering him.

My Harry.

My Golden Child.

Mine.

I've got my hands on his hips until I stroke one down his spine, tracing his tattoo, eliciting a moan that makes me tingle. He looks back over his shoulder at me, his eyes both bright and fogged, like a stormcloud edged in sunlight, and I reach to take hold of him but he's beat me to it, matching my pace so well you'd think we were one entity. Don't get me started on the philosophical stuff, please. I could go on for ages. He is so beautiful, lean and tanned like a leopard, growling with pleasure. I can feel it coiling, hot and sharp, in the pit of my stomach.

"Oh God," I breath in his ear, and he shudders.

"Oh-ho-ho, Drake," he bites back. I can't help it, I don't think either of us can: we both let loose low, hoarse shouts at the same time, until I sink my teeth into his shoulder and he sinks his teeth into his own arm. And I smell it.

Soap. Hospital. Smoke. Harry.

He's curled against my chest and Shorty's curled against his, and Jasper has deigned himself my hat. I've been watching him for the past hour, since I woke up: watching the slow rise and fall of his chest, his eyes moving beneath his eyelids, all the little sleep-gestures that look so innocent on him. This sweet boy is unnaturally adorable when he sleeps, I can't help but watch him. He wakes up and turns to look up at me, a sleepy grin on his face. While he makes breakfast he hums some ridiculous tune, adept at flipping pancakes over even with only one hand in action.

We manage almost a week's leave before he's itching to save people again. I'm hesitant to let him move at all until he starts doing jacks in the middle of the sitting room. The last two fingers on his left hand are still taped together, but he doesn't seem to care. The crew is glad to see us both, but everyone seems to have missed their daily dose of Harry. McCullen's wife is in hospital again and Jeremy's girlfriend left him, so everyone needs a bit of light-hearted Harry.

He's too good, is what he is.

He smoothes things out by virtue of being himself. We're Jeremy's wingmen when he heads out to a bar later that week and picks up a girl, and we send flowers and a teddy bear with a helmet to Mrs. McCullen. There's a unanimous vote that Harry is the most banged-up bloke in the house, and he cheers over it. Like we never left the Ladder, we fit back into our place. It's life.

There's a call for the entire battalion, a house fire, a semi-detached up in flames. The fire starts in one and creeps along to another, and if we're not there soon we'll have more homes burning to the ground. It's a routine call, everyone is out before we get there- including the pets- so we just need to hose it down. Harry is positively glowing the whole time, glad to be doing something he loves. We manage to keep both buildings from collapsing.

"What's that?" Ami says as we're packing up. I turn to look where he's pointing and see a dirty lump hanging out of a tree.

"A cat?" I shrug.

"Cat?" Harry asks. Classically Harry, he strides towards the tree, drops his coat at the base of it, and shimmies up the trunk. Ami rolls his eyes.

"Him and his fucking animals." Harry's hanging off of one of the branches to snatch the kitten. By now, a small crowd of people has gathered up just to watch the firefighter saving a kitten from a tree. I pick up his coat and he drops the last few feet to the ground, trying to keep the kitten from taking a fit. I thought Shorty was grimy when I picked him up; this animal is practically made of dirt.

"She's disgusting."

"She's adorable," Harry says resolutely. No one steps forward to claim her, so she comes with us back to the house. Everyone else concurs with me, but Harry stubbornly insists that this cat is beautiful. Somehow the job of washing her falls on me as Harry makes spaghetti for the crew. As the soot rinses out of her fur, she turns a mocha-latte tabby colour. By the time she's got home, Harry has named her Toffee.

"We're going to end up crazy cat ladies," I say as he introduces her to Jasper.

"I'm not planning on a sex change any time soon," Harry replies with a grin.

There aren't any more dramatic hospital visits. Just Harry being Harry, fearless and reckless and exuberant, keeping things at Ladder 33 from getting too heavy, bouncing around the house and yelling at McCullen when he tries to cook. He's still climbing up walls and jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and there's an incident with a guy growing pot among his spider plants and geraniums when his apartment went up in flames. There was way too much paperwork for us that day. The routine is the same: eat, sleep, breathe smoke, save lives, we've just added sex to the mix.

We keep it out of the house- don't ask don't tell only goes so far- but I take every opportunity to lavish attention on Harry. He's mine. I'll be damned if I don't let him know how much I care. So when he starts batting me away, sitting in a pet-pile on the armchair or showering alone, I tell myself he just needs a bit more space than I give him. All his free time I'm hanging off of him. Space. He's never been fond of closed quarters, after all.

But when he snaps at McCullen one day and stalks off to hide in the bunker, I can't say he needs space. McCullen wasn't doing anything out of character, he was just being the abrasive asshole he is, but the fact is he's our abrasive asshole, our Lieutenant. He's fine the rest of the day and the rest of the week, and eventually it just falls on the sideline, out of sight and out of mind.

"Fuck," I say one day as he's cooking dinner at home. I slide my free arm around his waist, flick some ash off the end of my cigarette and wrap the other around his chest, pressing my lips to his neck. It's still delicious. "You are stunning," he tries to wriggle out of my grip.

"I'm trying to do something, Draco," he says testily. I let him go and watch him, guarded and hunched over the stove, as he's cooking. I sit and Toffee occupies my lap- still kitten-sized after almost four months- and I pet her in the way she likes, a brain massage. As we eat dinner Harry is tense, edgy, tapping his fork against his plate and jiggling in his seat. When he comes back from walking Shorty, it's with a bag from the offie.

"What's that for?" I'm beyond confused. First, because Harry never buys the liquor. Second, because Harry never drinks vodka, and that's what he's doing, straight out of the bottle. "Slow down!" I tell him as he sucks air through his teeth, looking very much like a wild animal. He strides across the room purposefully, walking right over Jasper, and thrusts the bottle into my hand before kissing me. It's rough and hard and very much Harry, just the way I like him.

I forget he's been touchy lately and melt into him.

He's all wicked hands and teeth and tongue and he's practically carrying me into our bedroom. I just let him. Harry knows exactly how to work and touch and move, he's never needed any direction, he's just a genius by nature. How he can make me writhe in such an undignified way, I'll never know, and I just don't care because it's so good. Harry's pressing me against the bed with his weight; his breath is hot on my neck as he drags sounds I never knew I could make out of me.

"Drake, Drake, Drake," he breathes.

I just can't help but love him when he does that. So I tell him.

"I love you." He presses his face into my neck and bites me when he comes.

When I wake up the next morning, there is no Harry. The bed is cold where he usually lies, there are no breakfast sounds in the kitchen and no shower sounds in the bathroom. Shorty is curled up in Harry's place on the couch, Toffee is meowing pitifully from the place on the counter where their bowls are, and Jasper is by the door, staring at it with such intensity I wonder how it hasn't opened to let him out. I don't understand it.

I go to the house that day, but Harry isn't there. Ami frowns when I tell him that Harry has vanished, and Jeremy's forehead creases when he looks at me, without Harry standing next to me, like the picture is incomplete. It feels incomplete. Luckily things are smooth that day, as we're called in to check out a false bomb threat on a school and later to pry a woman out of a car wreck. Chief understands. He tells Lieutenant to get me replaced for the next two days.

There's no Harry when I get home, still. I fall into place on the couch and Shorty and Jasper make it their duty to lift my spirits. Shorty licks my forehead and Jasper paws at my face, trying to entice me to scratch his belly. It's Toffee who tells me where Harry went. She sits on the coffee table and bats something around on the surface. Something round and silver. Harry's ring. There's a letter on the table, a single sentence, and I read it as I roll the ring on my palm.

_Never wanted anyone to care about me. I'm sorry you started now._

I can't believe it.

I can't.

I slip his ring on. It's a bit big, but I don't care. It's all I have left of my Harry, my Golden Child, now. Pets and a sound system I can't work and a king-sized bed and memories and a ring. I'd like to say I'm not crying, but I'd be lying.

Somewhere along the way I lost him.

But _where_?

* * *

This started off as a songfic and ended up somewhere else. I was writing it with one idea in mind but, as I saw where it was going, there was only one inevitable conclusion. Don't worry, there will be a part two of _Fire _from Harry's PoV. I realise the beginning isn't exactly DH compliant but, whatever. I don't particularly care.


	2. Harry

**FIRE**

* * *

I shouldn't be here.

I left almost six months ago. Rather, Harry did. I don't know if I'm him anymore. I look like him and I sound like him, but I'm sure his parents would be disgusted with me. I'm sure everyone he ever knew would be disgusted with me.

I can't be Harry.

I shouldn't be here.

I'm about to turn back when the door opens and out steps a woman. She's laughing, her green eyes are flashing boldly and she's got waves of strawberry blonde hair. I mean waves. She's got a figure like a model, which makes it very obvious that she's pregnant.

"Oh," she says, giving me an apologetic sort of smile. "I'm sorry, I didn't see you. Are you looking for Dray?" My heart speeds up into my throat. He still lives here. He still lives here and there's a pregnant bombshell coming out of the flat. All I can do is nod.

"Dray!" she calls over her shoulder. "There's someone here for you!"

"Second!" Draco calls back, and the woman smiles at me again.

"It was nice meeting you," she says politely, and leaves, strolling down the hallway with a graceful gait and vanishing into the lift. I gape after her, feeling just slightly ill, when there's something winding through my legs. Jasper is staring up at me reproachfully, rubbing himself against me like he needs to rub his smell into my stink.

"Harry?" Draco sounds incredulous. I can't look up at him.

"Yeah," I say softly. "I just…" He grabs my arm and I flinch as he drags me into the flat, shutting the door behind me.

"Take your shoes off and sit down," he says blandly. I do as he says. He hasn't moved anything in the last six months- then again, we never moved anything before that- and I sink into the seat I used to take. Like we never skipped a beat Jasper twines himself around my neck, licking my hair, and Shorty jumps up into my lap, and Toffee is her usual aloof self, sitting on the back of the sofa with her tail hanging over my shoulder.

I've missed them.

Draco hands me a glass of 7-Up and sits beside me, pulling Toffee into his lap. She flops over like a baby and allows him to pet her, completely silent. I look up at Draco and he meets my eyes, and I see his forehead crease, like it always does when he thinks something is wrong, and I remember why I didn't want him to look at me. If he looks too long, he'll see me.

I can't let that happen.

But I've missed him so much.

I draw a shaky breath and cover it up with a sip of my drink.

"You look like shit," Draco says bluntly, but I can tell by his expression that it's because he's still surprised.

"I know," I say softly. He doesn't say anything else, but his face becomes deeply and utterly sad. I can't look at him anymore, so I look at Jasper, scratching his neck the way he likes it. He begins to purr, a rusty rumble that feels like a massage on my aching neck. Draco is patient, he always has been. He waited six years to tell me how he felt about me, I don't suppose I can expect him to push me for information now. I suspect if I told him I didn't want to talk about it, he'd accept that. He might kick me out, but he wouldn't ask.

"I got scared," I say, feeling like a child.

"I gathered that." I nod. That's a good response.

"It's just… it was one thing to know you cared about me, but when you…" I can't say it because it hurts too much. Gut-wrenchy, heart-twisty pain. He trusted me and I ran away. "Everything was going _too _right. I've never had that."

"Well," Draco says, "get yourself cleaned up." He stands up and leaves the room, and as I follow him I see him head into his old room, not mine, not the one we shared. It hurts, but I can't blame him. I shower and shave for the first time in what seems like forever. In the mirror, I look exactly like I used to. A bit ragged around the edges and a bit scrawny, but nothing is different. I grasp at my arms, covering them up. There's a knock at the door.

"Your clothes are still in your room," he says. So I get myself dressed and rejoin him, taking a seat on the sofa while he sits at the kitchen table, smoking. I notice his hand is shaking, just barely, as he takes a haul off of his cancer-stick. I always wished he'd quit, but it seemed a bit redundant: we ate smoke for a living after all.

He still did.

"Where have you been?" he asks finally.

"Not anywhere indoors."

"So you've come back because you're cold?" By the end of that sentence he sounds a bit pissed off. Rightly so, I'd think.

"No. I wanted to freeze to death, but I figured it wouldn't be fair for you." Draco blinks, his expression flat-out astonished when he looks at me, like he can't believe I'd ever say that. Some part of me understands that perfectly; Harry would never say that. He lights up another, still peering at me as if wondering if I'm really Harry. I don't blame him, _I'm_ still wondering if I'm really Harry.

"It wouldn't." That's when I notice he's wearing my ring, twisting it with his thumb around his finger, the same way I used to. "Do you know how fucking scared I was?" I do, and I don't, and I have no words to tell him. I just shake my head and he gestures towards me with his cigarette, a stabbing motion. "You just run out on me, leaving me to wonder what the fuck went wrong."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"I know you are. I can…" he shakes his head instead of finishing his sentence. I know what he can. He can see it in my eyes. They might not have me in there anymore, but I know they're filled with remorse and regret and pain. I hate looking at myself in the mirror nowadays: I remember Voldemort, something I never used to do.

"I was just scared," I whisper. I don't expect him to forgive me. I never expect anything from him, but least of all forgiveness. I don't deserve it. I'm surprised when I feel him hugging me, and I've just missed this so much I start crying. I never wanted to leave. I never wanted to hurt him. I never wanted to be frightened. I clutch at him and he just presses me against himself.

"It's okay, Harry," he says against my forehead. "I love you." It sounds apologetic. That just makes it worse. I've been wanting to hear that for the past six months, I never thought I would again. Not as earnestly and honestly as Draco says it. "I just wish you would have told me." He's too sweet.

I don't deserve him.

Draco orders pizzas, forcing me to eat more than I normally used too because he thinks I'm too skinny. I am, but I won't let him know that. I won't let him know a lot, not just yet. Not until I've stopped feeling like a monster. I have to resist the impulse to rub my arms when I realise that could take a very long time.

We sleep apart. I didn't expect anything different.

But it's so hard to sleep.

* * *

"Kid," a gruff voice said, and I looked up to see Earl standing there, with Bailey at his side. The wolfhound mix was panting, a goofy grin on his face, and Earl's grizzled grin was enough to make me smile. I didn't smile much then. I worried. I worried about which blokes would be dead or vanished today, whether it would be me there next.

"Hey Earl," I said, and Earl grinned wider. I liked Earl. He didn't pry, but he liked to talk. He'd tell me about how his wife left him after five years of sobriety, and how Bailey wouldn't leave him if he woke up with a hangover. I liked how he smiled, even though he was missing a few teeth, and how he laughed, even though he said he had nothing to be amused about.

"How's it goin', kid?" Earl asked as he helped me to my feet. I ran my hands through my hair, trying to straighten it out.

"Same old," I told him, and he nodded. We started walking, just down the road, through the orange-white pools the streetlights cast. I didn't know where we were going, I just followed Earl. Somehow, he always ended up somewhere good. As good as it could get in the situation we were in. Something crashed and I jumped, but Earl and Bailey kept on like nothing had ever happened.

There was a cacophony of laughter up ahead, and a gang of street punks came into view. Immediately every hair on my body stood on end, and one of the boys pointed towards us. Earl just kept walking, right into the group. One of them checked me with his shoulder and I stumbled, but Earl was there to bump me back into place without seeming to do so.

"Hey old man," one of them sneered. Earl inclined his head, but kept walking. "I'm talking to you!"

One of the kids kneeled down and began to scratch Bailey behind his ears. Bailey, as loving and soft as he was, tried to lick the kid. I didn't like the look on his face, and clearly Earl didn't either. He reached out for Bailey and the kid produced a knife from somewhere, absently reflecting the light with it. Earl froze; I froze; Bailey smiled a dog-smile, oblivious.

"We don't want any trouble," I said softly.

"_We don't want any trouble,_" one of them mocked. "The fuck kind of fag are you?"

"The English kind," Earl replied. "Let the dog go, kids."

"I ain't no kid, retard!"

Things got ugly then. The kid with the knife let it fly and Bailey let out a strangled yelp; Earl echoed him eerily as he lurched forward for his dog.

"Earl!" I shouted, but one of them trapped my arms up behind my back, wrenching my shoulders up. I kicked at him but it didn't seem to make a dent, he was like a fucking tanker. Earl, good God, that poor old man was driven to his knees by fists and feet, but he was still reaching out for his dog. I watched him touch Bailey's paw and Bailey let out a final, rattling breath. Earl was crying.

"_You fucking little shits_!" Earl screamed. One of them grabbed his hair, pulling his head back, and I screamed, a wordless shriek.

Earl went down, his hand still on Bailey's paw, and they turned with their disgustingly amused grins to me. My stomach tied itself in a knot as the kid flashed his knife.

"Fucking bums," he snarled.

"I'm FDNY you fucking _prick_," I shrieked, and kicked at him.

"'Course you are," he said. He was too close to me, I could feel the flat of his blade against my throat. In desperation I reached out for something, anything, to help me. Some of that rage and fear I'd felt when I was a kid with my aunt and uncle. He turned his knife and I screamed.

Something happened. There was a concussion of air, a hugely deafening clap, and they were on the ground. I didn't stop to think; with one last anguished glanced at Earl I turned and ran. As far as I could get, as far as I could go.

* * *

A lot of bad things happened to me during those months, but the first thing I always remember is Earl.

"Eggs?"

"Thanks." Draco slides the plate towards me. He stays standing, watching me for a moment before he turns back to the counter and fills up the cats' bowls with food, and then sets Shorty's on the ground. Then he sits down, at the opposite end of the table from me, and digs in with fervour. He doesn't look up at me for a long while, not until he's done eating. It's a sad look when he does, one I wish I could avoid.

"I've got to work today," he tells me, and I feel a pang of longing. I want to have to go with him. I miss the crew, and running into fires and smoke and destruction to pull out what was left. I miss saving lives. I miss being connected, laughing and leaping and feeling the rush of adrenaline.

I remember one time, when I was still the newbie and therefore needed to be mocked and prodded around, we went into a fire. No one trusted Draco or I, so we were stuck together. I think they expected us to nail ourselves with our halligans, or maybe someone else. We pulled a six year-old boy out from under a sofa that had caught fire, carried him outside with his grandmother. Somewhere along the lines- probably when I was rooting around under that sofa- my trousers had caught fire. So there I was, carrying this kid, and I didn't even notice I was a walking hazard.

I felt most alive then. They called my crazy. I just got crazier.

God I miss that. I want it back.

Instead I nod, ducking my head so that he can't see it in my eyes. I think wanting something would look rather terrifying to him, especially the way I want things now.

He leaves, in an oversized jumper and jeans, and I'm stuck under the scrutinising gaze of our pets. I know that they can see everything, I don't even try to hide from them. With Jasper and Shorty and Toffee, I finally give in and break down. Jasper purrs rustily, Shorty grumbles, and Toffee smiles. They still love me. They never stopped. I lie on the couch with Shorty on my stomach and Toffee on my chest and Jasper on my head, alternatively stroking one or the other. The television is on, white noise so I don't feel alone.

I tell them everything: everything that hurts, everything that I'm ashamed of, everything that has scared me these past months.

They don't care.

They just listen.

I tell them the second thing I remember, every time I think of these things. I need to rehearse it anyway, because Draco needs to know. Deserves to know. I just wish it wouldn't hurt so much. I tell them how I was out of it: food poisoning, drunkenness, depression, whatever the hell it was, I was out of it. I was so far gone half the time I'm sure I've convinced myself this happened when it really didn't.

"He came out of nowhere," I say, and Toffee puts a paw over my mouth, as if she knows and doesn't need to be told. I can see it in her eyes, her understanding. _He hurt you, _those keen yellow eyes say. _He hurt you like Draco never did. _

I wish I had never left.

Jasper's looks reminded me of Draco, but Toffee's attitude is his. She touches and she looks and she knows, all quietly, without blame. I hope that Draco will be so understanding, will silence me before I say something and make it real. He always knew how to make me feel better, alive, even when we were kids and we hated each other. I think I need someone to make me feel alive right now.

I fucked up. I ran away from something good because I freaked out, and I put myself in a horrible place. Just thinking about it makes me sick and I remember something I once read on an internet forum: _all aboard the whaaambulance. _I never said I was smart. I'm quite well known for doing idiotic things, now aren't I? Almost getting people killed seems to be my speciality, I just happened to do it to myself this time.

I stand up, seized by the urge to move. There's something sickly turning in my stomach and I feel like my brain is trying to squeeze out of my ears. I walk circles around the sitting room, absently plucking at my jumper before I pull it over my head and drop it on the armchair. The cats are watching me like I'm a nervous rat, and Shorty is following on my heels like he's afraid he needs to keep me from running away again.

On impulse I walk down the hallway, rubbing my knuckles against my palm before cracking them. I push open the door to Draco's room with my foot and it swings open smoothly. It's the same as it was before I left, before we started sleeping together: the shelves in the corner lined alternatively with novels and tomes, the computer on the desk on standby.

There's a photograph in a studded black frame on the desk, and I pick it up. My stomach turns over. It's a muggle photo, taken a few days after I was discharged from the hospital that time a cop tried to kill the crew. I've got my arm around Draco's shoulder and the other blokes in the company- Jeremy, Ami, McCullen- they've got their glasses and bottles raised in toast.

We were happy.

And I ruined it.

Whaaambulance.

I put the photo back down and sink into the computer chair. I never had much interest in computers- I just remember how much my cousin lived on his- but Draco was positively giddy when he found out the things he could do on them. On a whim I move the mouse and the screen flicks on. There are a few minimised windows along the bottom- Livejournal, eBay, Microsoft Word- but what catches my eye is the background.

God, I want to puke. I swallow back the feeling, raking my eyes over the picture: it's Draco, with two women, one of them the strawberry blonde, and the cats are around their necks like jewellery and Draco is grinning, but his eyes look lost. Like he's missing something. I've heard of people having bad relationships and "going gay", but never the other way around. Clearly, he doesn't like it.

The phone rings and I jump out of my seat. I pick it out of the cradle before I think and the tiny screen on the front says it's Draco's mobile calling. God knows when he got a mobile, but that's what it's telling me. It rings again and I answer it.

"Harry?"

"Yeah," I say.

"Someone on the night crew's gonna be late, they asked me to fill in," he says, his voice crackling a bit in the middle.

"All right."

"Be home around ten. Order something, there's money in the jar." Then he hangs up. It's amazing how much his voice can make my heart hurt. I look at the clock on the computer screen, and it tells me Draco should have been home in about two hours. I don't know how I've passed the day without going insane, but it's catching up to me. I feel sick and hot and twisty, and some animal is gnawing incessantly on my brain.

I realise I've started chewing on my fingernails and stop, clenching my fist. It's like my body's started doing things without my consent and I hate it. I hate it, but hating it _hurts. _I force myself to sit still on the sofa and watch a movie, but the movie swiftly blurs into a haze of sound and colour that's trying to suffocate me. I put my head in my hands and moan. Shorty puts his paws on my knee and stretches to lick the back of my hand.

I get up. I just can't take it anymore: the twist in my gut, the migraine. I stagger into my room, using the wall as a support, and fall to my knees beside my bed. Shorty is right there, whining and running half-circles around me, as I dig into my bag. It's old and ragged and I had to duct-tape the strap back onto it, but it's served me well. Too well.

I should hate it.

Shorty whines, and I look up at him. He's sitting squarely in front of me with this look in his eye, so sad that he can't help me.

_I'm sorry._

* * *

I didn't know where I was, but I sure didn't like it.

Some kid had told me that there was an abandoned house up this way, all boarded up except for the back door, which had been surreptitiously unlocked by a talented street punk. It was getting cold out, and I figured that one night indoors couldn't hurt me, especially if I kept myself out of their shit.

So I went. Discreetly, of course, even if I don't look half-bad compared to some of the blokes I've seen. No need to draw any unwanted attention to myself or the house and have someone call the cops on us. I've had about enough of cops beating me down, thanks very much. Around the back of this house, some of the boards ripped from the windows just enough to let light in, and let myself in the back.

It reeked. Piss and smoke and filth and God only knows what else. But the wind was gone, and it was better than nothing, especially since I'd heard it was supposed to rain that night. The room I was in seemed to be a kitchen, and it was empty. Walking as lightly as I could I checked out the sitting room and found it devoid of furniture and life, with a few half-hearted graffiti scribbles on the wall. It'd have to do.

I tried to arrange my coat into an entire bed, but as usual it didn't work. So I turned it into a pillow and tried to curl up into as small a ball as possible. The ceiling was creaking as someone made their way across the upper floor, and then the stairs were going, and I hoped I wouldn't be dragged into anything I didn't want to be involved in. This whole thing had been a bad idea, I decided.

"Hey, look," someone said in a rather dreamy tone. "Someone died in the corner."

"I'm not dead," I grumbled.

"Oh shit!" someone else said, giving the impression that it was all one word. "It talked!" I sat up, getting a good look at who was talking to me: a gaunt young woman and a tall, ratty boy. They had an equally ratty blanket wrapped around the both of them, giving me a bizarre impression in the half-light that they were connected together.

"I'm perfectly alive," I said.

"Awesome," said the boy, like he didn't quite believe me.

"Spending the night?" the girl asked, and I nodded. She sank to the floor near me and stared at me with huge, dilated blue eyes. "You're cute."

"I'm gay," I blurted, before I could stop myself.

"Aww," the girl said, and pouted. The bloke she was with sat down beside her, pulling the blanket back across his shoulders and clinging to her possessively. We talked. It was actually rather nice to not be alone: since Earl, I had basically cut myself off from all human contact. They were rather mellow, if a bit fidgety, and they tended to let conversations trail off before starting another, or go off on a random tangent. It took me about an hour to wonder if they were on drugs.

It should have been the first thing I thought about. The only reason I did was because the girl- Candice- reached forward to run her fingers through my hair, commenting on the set of white boy dreadlocks I was cultivating. Her arm was uncovered, exposing dozens of purplish pinprick bruises on her inner arm. She grinned lazily at me when I noticed them.

"Makes the night shorter," was her answer to my unasked question. I licked my lips, nervous, as she leaned forward and whispered, "You want?" I stared at her blandly for a moment.

"Why the hell not."

* * *

I throw my head back, my teeth gritted, and feel my hair brush the back of my neck. It's like liquid fire and crystallised ice cascading through my blood. I hate it, but it's so beautiful. Like a cousin to the rush I experienced running into fires, saving lives. My headache abates and the twist in my gut settles, pleasantly numb. My hand falls free and I feel Shorty push his head against it, hear him whining, but at this very moment I don't care.

I hate myself.

But it doesn't feel so bad.

My name buzzes pleasantly through my head right up until someone opens the door, letting light from the hallway cut in. I blink, trying to focus, but my brain already knows who's there, and it's panicking. It just takes my body a moment to catch up, is all. Shorty whines again as I lurch to my feet, trying to claw the needle out of my arm, but before I even get there Draco's seized me by the arms.

"Oww," I whinge, unable to help myself.

"Harry," Draco says, hurt and angry and sad and oh God I can't look him in the eye so I roll my head back again and stare up at the ceiling, trying very hard not to cry. He wasn't supposed to be home. He wasn't supposed to see this. I hiss at the sting as he pulls the needle out, not expecting him to throw it across the room with a savage yell. He's going to do that to me now, throw me out the door with that same disgust.

"Oh God Harry," Draco says, and I swear he's crying, but I'm still not looking at him. The buzz is gone, replaced by a twisting, awful illness that nothing I've ever experienced can compete with. Draco's got his arms around me, squeezing until I see stars, his chest hitching as he sobs. This isn't right. He should be angry, not hurt. Angry. Hit me, damnit, make me pay for what I've done. I can't say it.

Abruptly, he lets go of me, staggering out of the room. I hear his door slam shut.

For most of the night, I hear him sobbing, talking to himself.

I don't know if I slept.

It's almost two in the afternoon according to my alarm clock when I finally come out of my room. Draco is sitting on the sofa, wrapped in the green tartan throw that used to be on my bed, with the cats piled on him and Shorty in my space. He looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes and I feel my heart twist up and stop, and I just stand there.

"Are you…"

I shake my head. Maybe medically I'm still high, but I've felt like shit since last night. There's nothing pleasant about this. I think I'm finally seeing the true face of my addiction. There's no poetry, it's just painfully seducing me into thinking it's related to my favourite high.

He doesn't say anything else, just stares into his coffee cup. I shift my weight onto one foot and tap my fingers against my thigh for several moments before noticing I'm doing it. I have to force myself to stop, crossing my arms against my chest.

"Why?"

I don't really have an answer. Because I'm an idiot seems the best one. Because I thought I'd lost everything already, or rather, because I thought I'd run away from it. I was cold and lonely and wanted to die, but that wasn't it, because I didn't. I wanted to come back to Draco. Now look at what I've done.

"I don't have an answer," I tell him miserably.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he clarifies, still staring into his coffee.

"I was afraid," I don't have to think about that one, because it's the truth. Draco snorts.

"You killed a fucking dark lord at seventeen, you ran into burning buildings for a living, you're _gay, _for Christ's sakes, but you're afraid of telling me you're addicted to _heroin_?" It's delivered in a dangerously quiet whisper, and I can't help but flinch at the force behind it.

"I…"

"So much for Gryffindor courage." I sag, sinking into a seat on the rug, and bury my face in my hands. "Why did you have to fuck everything up, Harry? Being scared is one thing, what you've done…" He sighs.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sure," he says, sounding defeated. I hear the clink as he puts the mug down on the coffee table, and then I feel him drawing the blanket around my shoulders, pulling me close. He cradles me against his chest and I just want to break down and cry.

I've wasted so much time. I stole it from myself, I tripped and fell and fucked things up royally, and now he's going to have to carry me back to that place we used to be. If he wants to. I look up at him, meeting his eyes and holding them even though I want nothing more than to turn away. His eyebrows draw together and he frowns, sadly, at what he sees in there.

"I'll help you," he says quietly, "if you want me to."

Looking into those eyes, silver and earnest and loving, I know he means it. He'll never give up on me, even though I gave up on him. Draco doesn't let go of the things he decides are his, and I guess I've always fallen into that category. His rival, his friend, his lover. His Harry. I nod, and Draco kisses my forehead, and I can't help but feel at peace for the first time in months.

He's brewed a potion, his first in at least two years, buying everything off the internet. I told you he could do things with his computer. It won't fix anything, but it will help keep the pain at bay. Then I just need to beat the cravings, the awful niggling creature behind my left eye that makes me want the bliss that heroin provides. At a cost, I keep reminding myself. Draco.

If I let myself slip… I don't know what I'll do.

I drink it, and it tastes like venom. It's putrid, but I need to do this. When there's nothing but dregs in the cup I drop it in the sink and gulp mouthfuls of water straight from the tap. Goddamn, that was disgusting. I stumble down the hall, clutching the arms of my jumper, and peek into Draco's room. He's on his computer, eating a bag of crisps, undoubtedly still looking up potions or detox symptoms or something. He closes his window and pauses for a moment, tapping the keyboard, and I remember.

"Why are you helping me?" I ask in a small voice, and he turns to look at me. "Your… girlfriend."

His eyebrows raise comically. "Girlfriend?" I nod, stepping into his room, and lean over him on his chair, pointing to the blonde on the background. "Kelly?" I nod again, and Draco laughs. He presses a hand to the side of my head and pushes my cheek against his head. "Kelly is McCullen's middle daughter. That," he points to the other girl, "is Christina. Her girlfriend."

"Oh… they're lesbians?" I say, and my brow furrows. "Wait… McCullen has a _lesbian _daughter?"

"Yep. Loves her to bits, too," he says, and the computer goes on standby mode, flicking to a black screen. "I met her a bit after you… well, she liked me. And Chris liked me. And they wanted a kid. So… I donated my services."

I squeeze my eyes shut against the mental image, trying not to laugh. "You had _sex_ with a _woman_?"

"Of course not," Draco says, sounding both amused and disgusted. "They do all these wonderful things now, people who want kids don't even have to touch each other."

"You're having a kid," I say, and smile. Draco would be a fabulous father.

"Kelly's having it, I think I'd be screaming in terror if I had to go through that," he says.

"It will be so blonde."

"Yeah, well, Chris saw a picture of you, and she said when you came back, she wants some of your little soldiers."

"Came back?" I say, trying to remember how to breathe. There's something I don't need to think about right now. Draco finally gets out of his computer chair, wrapping his arm around my shoulder.

"I told them that you went back to England for a bit," he says quietly. "It's what everyone thinks."

"Oh." He did that for me, to save my arse. How in God's green earth did I think I should be scared of him? All he ever did was care about me. I lean against him as he leads me back into the sitting room and we sink into the sofa, curled up together to watch the television. All I can think of is how much I did to hurt him, and how hard he's ever tried to help me.

I recall a time when I'd fallen halfway through a stairwell and was holding myself up by my arms. Draco had tried to haul me out of the hole and, for his trouble, I'd ended up stabbing him in the foot with my halligan. Luckily it missed anything important and was rather easy for him to heal up before anyone noticed, but I felt like an idiot. Hurt for helping.

Hurt for helping. He helped me leave England, and I know he misses his mother. We don't even know if she's still alive. He helped me get into the FDNY even though I know there are places he'd rather be. He loves it, but I doubt he'd have chosen it for himself. He helped me keep myself in order when I could have easily spiralled into this pit five years ago. Now, he's helping me crawl out of a hole I dug for myself, even though I left him to do it.

A normal person would hate me. I guess we've always been a little abnormal.

I stay in hiding for several long months. I don't even go on the balcony, sitting by the door when Draco's outside there smoking. It takes that long for me to stop needing the venom, but even afterwards I don't trust myself outside. I'm so afraid of being afraid, I'd rather hide away forever. Draco convinces me otherwise.

"You've got to meet Chris and Kelly," he says, softly, against my ear as we're watching House one evening.

"But-"

"Shh, they don't bite." So he invites them over the next day. I wear long sleeves. My bruises are gone, but my arms are corded and wiry and look awful anyway. I've barely been able to let Draco look at them, I'm not going to let these strangers do it. I'm sitting at the kitchen table with one of Draco's cigarettes, trying very hard to calm myself down, jiggling my foot and scratching Toffee's forehead, when the door opens.

"Harry?" Draco calls out, and I wave, stabbing the cigarette into the ashtray. It certainly didn't help matters, because I'm still feeling shaky as I stand up and walk towards them. Draco, with this beautiful blonde pregnant chick, her arm around the waist of a petite girl with black hair and blue eyes. Chris grins widely at me and Kelly looks like she remembers me.

"You!" she says. "Oh my, England must be a terrible place to send you home looking like that."

I try to smile. "Er, not really. I just had a bad time there."

"You are even better looking in person," Chris quips. "No wonder Dray loves you." I blush, and Draco makes several tutting noises, shooing us towards the sitting room. Chris sits in the armchair and Kelly takes up a space on the sofa, and before I can have any say in the matter Draco has pulled me into his lap. I just blush harder, hard enough that I know I'm actually colouring despite my complexion.

"Oh!" Chris squeals. "He's _shy_!"

They're nice girls, really. Chris has a fabulous sense of humour and Kelly is infallibly sweet, so sweet that she coerces an unpractised purr out of our sugar-princess, Toffee. That was what made me decide they had to be all right: Toffee is almost scarily quiet, for a cat. When they leave later that evening, Draco's got a lazy grin on his face, a look that says _I told you so _without him saying it.

I pretend I don't see.

When I go to bed that night, Shorty sleeping on my feet, I think that maybe things will be all right after all. Maybe I won't be an idiot this time.

I think I should leave the house. I've been crammed up in here for absolutely ages and, while I'm terrified I'm going to do something stupid, it's wearing on me. I need air, I need to stretch my legs a bit, so I leash up Shorty and decide we're going for a walk. I take the stairs rather than the lift, realising as I round down the way-too-many flights why I never used to walk down them, and by the time we're outside I think I've walked quite enough.

Shorty tugs me off in a new direction, and I follow. I become part of the crowd in the chilly, grey world that is street-level New York. It's not so bad, really. I'm used to walking, I enjoy it. I walked when I lived with the Dursley's, and I walked all over Hogwarts, and I walked everywhere with Draco. Cars are bloody awful machines that I will never set a toe in again. Shorty capers, happily sniffing after every other dog we pass, even a Great Dane that's part of a pile of dogs being walked and looks like it would like nothing more than to snack on him.

I watch the people. They're interesting sometimes, how they can ignore what's right before their gloomy faces, pass over what they don't want to see. It doesn't exist. There's a small girl crying as her mother pulls her along by her hand, her face far too old to belong to a child; a pair of teenage boys done up in ridiculous punk attire, glaring at the world through hooded eyes that don't quite hide distrust and hurt. There are too many.

I know, if the right person looks back at me, they'll put me in the crowd of faces that I can see hide fear and loathing. I tug Shorty up, away from a grey-haired businessman who doesn't seem to see anything that's smaller than him, and nearly run into someone going the opposite way. My heart wants to scream through my mouth when I recognise his face, his coldly cruel eyes, like a knife.

He passes by, not seeing me, and I half-turn to watch him go. Of course. During the day, we're all different people. During the day he's not a street kid who kills dogs and old bums for kicks. He's a kid skiving off of school, or running errands for his mum who doesn't really care about him. He's left a knot of fear in my stomach just by being there, and I hurry home.

So many months go by that my time away seems petty compared to how long I've been with Draco. He's always off at work during the day and I still ache to get back to doing what I love, but I know I can't, not yet at least. It's June fifth, Draco's birthday, and I decide he needs one of those disgusting flourless chocolate cakes he loves so much. It's easy enough to make, even if I have to keep Shorty far away from it, because he's got some kind of death wish and enjoys trying to eat things that could kill him.

Draco comes home as I put it in the oven. He seems terribly amused that I've got chocolate on my face, and my shirt, and just about all over the kitchen. I'm terribly amused when he decides that the only way to get the chocolate off of me is to lick it. He's a right pain in the arse sometimes, but I can't fault him. If he was wearing chocolate, I think I'd lick it off too.

We order takeaway barbecued chicken from a local restaurant and watch the cake rise a bare centimetre, thick and darkly bittersweet. Draco seems to enjoy just inhaling the heady scent, his eyes closed. He's beautiful like that, leaning back in his chair so that his hair sweeps across his face. I used to think he was his father in miniature, but he's more like a male version of his mother, and as he sits there in front of the oven, I remember the kid I never liked.

And always loved, if you can call unhealthy obsession love.

I've had plenty of unhealthy obsessions in my lifetime, but Draco is barely outmatched for my obsession with family. He's been there from the get-go, from the first moment I started really living. I remember eating chocolate and raspberry ice cream the first time I met him, and chocolate frogs when he first introduced himself. The first time I actually worried about whether he would live or not, I remember I'd sneaked a hunk of Honeyduke's from Ron's stash.

When I really think about it, Draco's always come hand-in-hand with chocolate. And obsession. I don't see why any of it should change now.

"Is it done?" he whinges, looking over at me. I'm sure he'd hex me if I ever told him his eyes look like quicksilver, because he fastidiously claims that silver is a _girly _colour, and grey is manly. Stormclouds and stone and iron are grey, but Draco is none of these things. He's lightning. He's possessive obsession.

I pull the cake out of the oven, regardless of whether it's ready or not. If it isn't, it will be liquid lava chocolate in the centre, just as good as if it were done. I cut into it and the heart of it oozes thick syrup, which drips across the top as I put the first piece on a plate and Draco attacks it with gusto. He's like a wolf gorging on a carcass: intent only on devouring as much as he can in as little a time as possible rather than savouring the sweetness of his victory.

When he kisses me later, I can taste it on his tongue. Bittersweet, like he is. I've always liked him with a bit of bite.

Three days later, Chris rings us, all incoherent screaming, and about the only words we can make out are _Kelly _and _hospital. _Draco is terrified, I can see it roiling in his eyes and across his pallid face, but he pretends he isn't as he apparates us to a desert part of the multilevel car park near the hospital. We run the rest of the way, and I'm afraid that something horrible has happened. Draco has been almost giddy the last few months, alternatively taunting his father that his only heirs will be half-bloods and wondering exactly how screwed up this kid will be, with two mums and a dad and an uncle and way too many pets.

Oh, and magic. Don't forget the possibility of magic.

But it's all for naught, because Chris is jumping up and down ecstatically when we arrive, and we get to see exactly why she was freaking out. Draco attaches his nose to the glass with all the appropriate awe of a new father, and I just stare. It's red, and itty-witty, with flailing limbs, but it's not screaming at the top of its lungs as most of the others are. A little card proclaims it female, seven pounds twelve ounces, thirteen inches in length and unnamed.

"We wanted you to be here," Chris beams.

She ends up with one of the longest names I've ever seen: Marie Narcissa-Gabrielle McCullen White Malfoy. Legally, I suppose she's neither a McCullen nor a White, but that's what she is properly.

She makes Draco happy, even when he announces that his father is rolling in his grave with a half-blood granddaughter. Which, of course, prompts Kelly to wonder how she's a half-anything. We weasel out of explaining that somehow, even though we know we'll have to fess up someday. I don't care right now, because it feels like we're actually part of something larger than ourselves, a family, and it makes me feel about this big for being a petty prat.

I've got Draco. He's quite enough for me.

But he's still restrained, to the point where I think I might have to just come out and tell him to stop holding back, keeping the tactile Draco-beast on a short leash and a tight heel. The fact that he's still afraid to touch me is hurting him, and I can see it: around his eyes, in his fluttering hands. Like he's being smothered by rose petals and feathers, something insubstantial that's killing him for something he needs. It makes me feel just slightly ill when I think it's me choking him, but every time I want to tell him to _stop _keeping his hands to himself the words catch in my throat.

Maybe it's thinking about these things that distracts me, but somehow, Shorty has got away. His leash goes sliding across the pavement as he crosses the road, blithely unaware of any danger he might be in, and my first instinct is to follow him, shouting.

"Shorty!" I yell.

"_Squeeeee_!" a car yells.

Running was a bad idea.

* * *

If I hadn't know that Draco Malfoy was here, in this very room, I think I would have been shocked. As it was, I'd seen him just now on the map, with Myrtle. I didn't think much of it until I saw Draco, his white-blond head bowed over a sink as Myrtle tried to console him in what seemed a very unpractised way. It was hard for my sixteen year-old brain to get over the fact that _Malfoy _was _crying_.

I watched his shoulders shake, dumbfounded for what to do. It seemed to me that backing slowly out of the room was a good option, but the stubborn part of me wanted to know why he was crying. If only I was cloaked, I could hang around longer and see why. I took a step back, but Draco looked up at that moment, his eyes going wide as he spotted me.

He wheeled around, scrubbing a sleeve across his face as his other hand extracted his wand from wherever it was hidden, training it on me. I don't know when my wand got into my hand, but it was evidently too slow because I missed the first hex he fired off, and it missed me as I ducked. He was like some rapid-fire machine, his eyes wild: an old loathing mixed in with fear, maybe that I'd rat to his little cronies.

Things exploded and Myrtle screamed hysterically, and I flourished my wand, shouting the first thing that came to mine.

_"Sectumsempra!"_

Like slow motion, Malfoy flinched and collapsed, sheets of red-hot blood staining his robes and seeping across the floor. Suddenly I was thrust into a nightmare instead of another childish brawl for supremacy. I was _killing _Draco Malfoy because of what he was, instead of what he could be. Blood, thin and watery, soaked into my knees and I felt bile rising in my throat as Draco twitched on the floor.

I felt pain. My chest and ribs and back burned and ached, as if Draco's agony was becoming my own. He twisted on the floor, his face a grimace, a parody of a smile.

"Hurt me hurt you," he rasped, and my world exploded.

* * *

I don't know when I wake up, but I know it doesn't hurt. In fact, I feel as if I've been wrapped in a numbly muffling cloud of bliss, and I sigh. I can feel a lazy smile flickering around my face as my eyes flutter open. Where am I, exactly? Does it really matter? _No, _a small voice in my head says, and I'm quite content to listen to it. It's much nicer than the ugly rasp from… whatever I was just thinking of.

"Harry?"

"Mm," I say, turning my head to focus on the source of the voice. It's nicer than both the rasp and the small voice. It's something I can recognise as well, and I'm pleased that he's with me on this cloud. "Draco." He looks down at me, mildly puzzled and very pale and fuzzy-looking around the edges. I can tell by the set of his face that we're not at home. "Where'm I?"

"Hospital," he says faintly.

"We come here a lot," I say with a grin, remembering just how many times I've ended up here. Draco hasn't, but I have. I seem to get hurt a lot. Some things never do change.

"How are you feeling?"

"Happy." Draco frowns and I wave my hand in his general direction. He grabs it, squeezing it tightly, and they both land on the bed. To me, it seems that my hand has grown a few extra fingers and I snort a laugh. I could use a few more fingers, and limbs, and things. A faint discomfort crawls up along my ribs, but it's quickly masked out by… something. Happy.

His eyes are moving, too fast for me to watch them go, but he looks like he's realised something. He's yelling and it hurts my head, but a nurse bustles in, and doctors, and they chatter far too fast and with too many big words. Draco seems very cross with someone, maybe me, so I close my eyes again and try to block them out.

By the time he's come back to sit beside me, the discomfort is becoming pain, and I'm not feeling quite so good-willed towards the world.

"Morphine… metabolising… _ugh,_" Draco sounds disgusted.

"Shuddup," I say groggily, wishing I was asleep again.

"Look, I'll just try to heal some of it up, all right?" I grunt, and he seems to take that as assent, because I can feel a tingle of magic as he casts a few rudimentary healing charms. The ones he had to learn to keep me in one piece, mostly. It feels better, but not by much, and I open my eyes to look at him again.

"What happened?"

"You got hit by a car," Draco says, concentrating very hard on my left ear instead of my face. "They gave you some painkillers and patched you up and rang the flat."

"Did you find Shorty?" Draco looks down and I feel my stomach drop away. "Draco? Where's Shorty?"

"He's…" He doesn't finish the sentence and he doesn't need to. I tilt my head back and shut my eyes. He's dead. I killed my dog. Shorty, with his scruffy cheeks and his floppy ears and little square feet and muzzle, his keen green-gold eyes and his perfectly loving attitude, is gone.

"It's not fair."

Jasper and Toffee seem to agree when we get home. Jasper wails out on the balcony, savaging the little grass box that was Shorty's makeshift toilet, and Toffee gathers up his toys and makes a nest out of them below the television, daring us to take them away. I can't look at them, and opt for taking a shower instead. Wash away the disgusting smell of the hospital, the strange, coiling animal that's taken up residence again in my gut, the pain of losing Shorty.

It's almost my birthday. Why did Shorty have to go? He had years yet and it just isn't fair. I'm like King Midas in reverse: everything I touch crumbles into so much dust and ashes. Even the warmth of the water can't help relax me, I just feel more and more tense as I remember everything Shorty did. How he warmed my toes at night and liked to lie on my lap or my stomach, or how he licked Draco behind the ears when he really wanted to annoy him.

Dust and ashes.

I don't realise I'm not alone until Draco's right there, and I don't realise I'm crying until he kisses the tears away. It isn't fair. I killed our dog, I lost Shorty while worrying about how I'd hurt Draco, about how he was afraid. I was selfish and now he's doing exactly what I was thinking about, despite the fact that now his shirt's soaked and we're dripping all over, and there's no Shorty to lick up the mess.

I cry harder and Draco doesn't care. For the first time since I came back, we sleep in the same bed.

For my birthday, Draco presents me with a ring, basically identical to my old one, the one he's still wearing, but set with a black gem. I don't have to feel the innate magic to know he's made it; I don't have to ask to know it's what's left of Shorty. Shorty liked to wink, just like the gem is now.

He's too many kinds of wonderful that I just don't deserve.

I kiss him, and it doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop when I've shredded his shirt, or when I'm seized with the inexplicable urge to _lick _the jewel-toned ouroboros around his arm, or when he hits the door to my bedroom and whinges something about my slamming him around like a leaf caught in a tornado. I can tell you honestly that it doesn't stop when he's sprawled out on my bed looking like some kind of de-winged angel, not of the variety that defied God, but the kind that wanted to see what all the fuss of humanity was about.

I show him some humanity that leaves him whimpering incoherently and shivering. It's like he was born knowing how to _move, _something I'm sure he'd be offended with if I told him. His fingers dig almost painfully into my arms and I recall what happened the last time this did, and how some small part of him must be hoping to keep hold of me there instead of running. I don't want to run this time.

"Love you," I say, and I can feel his shock, but not for long.

He seems to think his long arms and legs can keep me from escaping after, but I've still no intention of doing so. Instead I kiss all the shadowed corners of his face, the parts that were being smothered in rose petals and feathers and secrets, and tell him over and over.

"Love you love you love you."

"Mine," he says possessively.

Devilish angels in snake disguises.

He's beautiful when he sleeps. I reason with myself that I think he's beautiful no matter what he's doing, despite the fact that he likes to complain about how I seem to feminise him. I don't particularly care about that, because handsome just doesn't quite cut it with Draco. He's too well cut, like a marble statue made by a master, too lean and willowy and pale. For a ridiculous moment I wonder if there's Veela in him, and smile.

I feel as if I've pulled the last piece of the puzzle out of thin air and, suddenly, everything is back to normal. Like I had never left in the first place. There's an achingly empty space in my lap when we watch television, but Draco soon takes to putting his head there, like I'm a pillow. I stroke his hair and I think about how I'm good at screwing things up, but he's always been there to make it better, or at the very least make it seem less.

I've hurt him countless ways, and he's always there to forgive me. I screw things up often, and he's always there to piece it back together. And while I think it's not fair to expect him to save my arse all the time, I do think this:

I'm lucky he loves me.

That's all the luck I need.

* * *

There, the second (and currently final) part of _Fire. _Yep, there's no fire! My muse ran away about seven pages (6-7 thousand words) in, but I got it done anyway. Things SWK didn't know before she started writing this: firefighters have way too much jargon, heroin metabolises into morphine (I was under the impression that they were different strains of the same chemical) and Harry Potter whines too much.

Get out of my head now, Harry.


End file.
